


There's Gonna Come A Day When You Feel Better

by spine_of_steel



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Nebula (Marvel) Angst, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 02:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18729553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spine_of_steel/pseuds/spine_of_steel
Summary: Nebula is used to feeling cold.Her cybernetics are always cold against her organic skin, the little of it that remains. It doesn't bother her. She knows what actual pain can feel like. She feels the most relief when she has a mission, when she can move and not have to think about her-body-that-isn't-her-body-anymore-but-is.(She thinks she used to live on a warm planet, maybe. Has vague recollections of lying on soft grass and feeling the way humid air slid down her throat.)





	There's Gonna Come A Day When You Feel Better

Nebula is used to feeling cold.

Her cybernetics are always cold against her organic skin, the little of it that remains. It doesn't bother her. She knows what actual pain can feel like. She feels the most relief when she has a mission, when she can move and not have to think about her-body-that-isn't-her-body-anymore-but-is. 

(She thinks she used to live on a warm planet, maybe. Has vague recollections of lying on soft grass and feeling the way humid air slid down her throat.)

She is only alive because Thanos wills it, and no matter how much she tries she can not bring herself to actively wish for the alternative, no matter how many times she is dismantled and brought back together, agonizing piece by agonizing piece brought by the cruel indifference of her father.

Gamora can remember her family, at least when Nebula first met her, back before the endless fighting and the burning hatred. Had held her hand and showed her the blade Thanos had given her and whispered so quietly and fiercely that Thanos would never be her father, Thanos killed my father. Nebula can not remember hers. Can't remember anything from before that first, horrible day and You will have a new family, a stronger family.

***

She hates Gamora.

Hates her subtle insubordination and her fighting prowess and her cruelty. Thanos is a Titan, and wields cruelty indiscriminately against anyone in his path, daughter or not. Gamora actively chooses it, in every fight, in every match, in every new piece of her that gets thrown away like something useless, summer sun being torn from her with every choice that Gamora makes. She wants to kill her, wants to rip her pretty green skin off and scream at her. WHY CAN'T YOU EVER CHOOSE ME, she wants to say, HE WANTED TO KEEP ME BUT WHY DON'T YOU, WHY DON'T YOU WANT ME. WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SISTERS.

Gamora has always ran warm. Has never had a piece of her replaced with her-not-her technology. Gamora is perfect. When Nebula drops her head and bows on her knee, Gamora will stand straight and roll her eyes, and Father is always so amused by her, prefers her, loves her more. She hates herself so much for wanting to be more than she is, wanting heat so badly it hurts. Every part of her is in agony, these days. She has to live with it. There are no other options for her.

***

Gamora leaves. Father still doesn't want her. 

Nebula chases Gamora down, screams at her and tries to crush her with a stolen ship. Gamora doesn't kill her; Nebula doesn't know if she is relieved or not.

They become sisters. It doesn't fix everything, and neither of them were ever naive women, to pretend that it would. Gamora hugs her and Nebula has to hold back tears she hasn't felt in so long. She was always the sensitive one, Thanos said (He'd contemplated taking out her eye ducts the last time she and Gamora had fought, but he'd replaced her left thigh instead, where Gamora had imbedded a knife, and then her whole leg had been metal and perfect)

Gamora's hair is soft, and she's stiff and awkward where her arms are hesitantly placed around Nebula, and she can't even remember the last time someone touched her like this. With their whole body and their heart, soft and tender like Nebula was someone precious. 

She leaves after that. She is going to rip Thanos apart layer by layer and she is going to enjoy it.

***

Gamora never returns from Vormir.

Nebula can't let herself feel it. She has a mission. She needs to live outside of her body until it's done. 

***

Her and the mechanic are the only ones left, when Thanos wins. They stay there, on the ruins of Titan, for a long time. He keels over in the sand and she leaves him there and her own grief washes over her, unfamiliar and familiar at the same time, burning and despondent. She picks up sand and lets it sift through her fingers and can't feel it.

They get on the ship. She is suddenly in her body and feeling agony in a way she has never felt before. The mechanic shows her a game, pointless and absurd to sit there when they are going to die of oxygen deprivation on their broken spaceship, but. It doesn't matter. Her family is dead.

They are saved anyway, by a woman she has heard of but never seen in person. Her name is Captain-Marvel-but-Carol-is-fine, and she takes them to Earth, where the rest of Tony Stark's team was before The Snap, and because Nebula has nowhere else to go. 

When they go to the Garden, the Asgardian kills Thanos and her Father is dead. She is given a bed when they return, and it is soft and yielding. She rests on the floor the first several nights, until Tony Stark wakes up and forces her to “just sleep in the bed, god, you're giving me back pain just looking at you.” 

***

Rocket and Nebula travel together, in this new universe. They help organize rescue efforts and prevent others from stealing from those weaker than them, and when they've done what they can they move on. Natasha sends them a wedding invitation to Tony's wedding, and at the reception he calls her Bluebell and asks her if Rocket actually eats out of the trash or if Nat is just fucking with him, he isn't going to put it past her.

He gives her a hug. People hug more, in the universe after the Snap. Everyone, everywhere, is more prone to cry and hug and toss their feelings in everyone's face. Even Rocket, who is by virtue of Gamora one of the only friends she has, despite being a horrible creature, still sobs like his heart is breaking. She still isn't quite sure what to do with her arms, wary of accidentally hurting him. She hasn't hugged anyone since Gamora. 

Mass suicides nearly drive multiple species to the point of extinction. There is nothing to be done for them. They can never get back what they have lost.

***

On Morag, Rhodes looks at her slowly melting arm as she puffs air on it to cool it down.

(“I wasn't always like this.”

“Me either. But we work with what we got, right?”

She can almost feel the heat of her home planet if she concentrates.)

She kills her past self. She isn't instantly erased from the timeline and she is grateful. From what she gathered from everyone else's half-assed explanations, they were running the risk of creating alternate realities, as opposed to erasing her own. She doesn't regret it, but she still feels the loss, another stacked on top of her endless series of them.

Tony Stark dies. 

The funeral is private, and she places herself near the back. Afterwards, she lingers on the back porch and winds up sitting on the swing stiffly. Morgan Stark is left in her care briefly while Happy has gone inside to get food and cry. Nebula watches Morgan out of the corner of her eye while the girl unabashedly stares at her. Nebula might have seen her in person once, when she was very young. Morgan fiddles with the hem of her dress. She doesn't seem too distressed, so Nebula tries to recall her age. Three, maybe? Four? The Terran time keeping system was never a very useful skill for a killer to have. Does she even understand that her father is dead? 

Morgan reaches out to touch her hand and Nebula jerks, a little. This doesn't seem to bother the girl, who seems to take Nebula's lack of disagreement as permission to continue fiddling with her hand. 

“You're a pretty color.” She says, firmly. “Blue's my favorite color.”

Nebula swallows and has to blink back tears. Nobody has ever called her pretty before. “Thanks.” She says, her voice hoarse.

Morgan hums. “Can you push the swing?” She asks. 

Nebula has never been on a swing before. She rocks, very gently, with her feet pressed into the wood underneath her. She closes her eyes and breathes. She feels the sun on her face.

**Author's Note:**

> I just spent two hours writing Nebula angst and I love my angry blue child. Title from the song Up the Wolves by the Mountain Goats. Also tony calling nebula bluebell i first read in this fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18651400 Go check it out!


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